Showing events on this day in years past that shaped history... just, not our history.

Friday, December 12, 2014

December 2, 1859 – John Brown's War Ends

The largest outbreak of violence over the issue of
slavery in the United States erupted in 1859 as abolition-extremist John Brown
seized the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Inside the arsenal
were 100,000 government firearms, enough for the largest army the continent had
ever seen. Brown's agents rushed as much of the weapons as possible to nearby
farms, creating enough chaos that wagonloads of munitions went in disparate
directions and turned the region into a war zone.

The raid was not the first of John
Brown's ends-justify-the-means actions, though it would be his crowning
achievement. Born to a Connecticut Puritan family, Brown became an
industrious entrepreneur in Ohio before the economic crash following the Panic
of 1837 wiped out his businesses. He moved his family, scourged by illness, to
Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was touched by the abolition movement and
eagerly became a part of the Underground Railroad. When his last bid toward
business in the wool industry collapsed, he became enraptured in the cause of
abolition, founding the League of the Gileadites to defend, by any means
necessary, fleeing slaves from legal capture under laws such as the Fugitive
Slave Act. As the Kansas territory opened and Border Ruffians (pro-slavery
forces) gathered there to ensure it would not be voted free, Brown rushed to
fight, murdering five ruffians at Pottawatomie in 1856, the bloodiest
massacre of Bleeding Kansas, and losing a son to the feud.

When calm settled in Kansas, Brown left for the
North on a crusade to raise funds for all-out war. He gave lectures to
crowds that included writers Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and
Bronson Alcott. As word grew, Brown met with wealthy abolitionists, some
of whom dispatched weapons to his cause such as 200 breech-loading carbines and
950 pikes. Mercenary Hugh Forbes signed on as well as two dozen
volunteers. Harriet Tubman offered to serve but was unable due
to illness, while Frederick Douglass refused to join what he correctly
thought to be a suicide mission. In fact, this outright violence "would
array the whole country against us."

Brown ventured forth nonetheless. His first action
was to kidnap George Washington's great-grandnephew Lewis Washington and, more
importantly to the cause, seize relics of liberation that were in his
possession: a sword given to Washington by Frederick the Great and pistols
gifted by Lafayette. They proceeded to cut telegraph wires and capture a
passing train, where they killed the black baggage-clerk who tried to stop
them. Brown was about to let the train go to spread the word of the uprising
when one of his men asked, "Shouldn't we spread our
own word?" Brown agreed, the train was disabled, and the men marched
on the unsuspecting armory.

Northern Virginia and western Maryland were
turned into a warzone. Runners dispatched arms to slave populations scouted out
the summer before. Some of the slaves seized the opportunity to fight back,
others refused to fight, and many fled and hid to escape the
coming violence. Local militia immediately began to counterattack, but
Brown proved far more organized and successfully held the arsenal, even sending
out more weapons. State and federal officials did not hear about the raid until
everyone else did, through panicked or excited telegrams.

As the United States government hurried
to assemble a force to march on Brown's holdout, Brown himself
received reinforcements as word spread among slaves and abolitionists from the
North raced to join. Finally, after days of turmoil, President Buchanan called
together Marines and put them under command of cavalry Colonel Robert E.
Lee, who had time to dress in his uniform before marching. As they approached
the arsenal, Brown's forces retreated, setting fire to everything that hadn't
already been emptied.

The small military force was joined by more and
more soldiers, and an overall quelling of the uprising was organized by General
Winfield Scott. His work was slowed by constant guerilla warfare Brown had
learned in Kansas, although he was ultimately betrayed by the surrender by
Henry Forbes, who exonerated himself by pointing to a letter he had sent to
Secretary of War John Buchanan Floyd. Theories rose up that Floyd, a
Virginian, could have prevented the whole thing, making public opinion on
the matter one of government failure with Floyd becoming the fall guy, creating
the colloquial term "his name is Floyd" for anyone who fails
miserably.

Brown was shot during a standoff in the Appalachian
Mountains on December 2, and, though there were some actions after, that was
considered the end of the rebellion. It became the top matter in the election
of 1860, when Senator Stephen Douglas was able to blame the sitting
administration, including Vice-President John C. Breckinridge, and rally
Deep Southern votes to win the Democratic nomination and then the
presidency with Virginian Robert M. T. Hunter, whose home had been in the area
of the turmoil, as his vice-president.

While the nation was united against violent
uprising in any form, the Abolition Movement virtually collapsed. People did
not want to associate with Brown and many abandoned the cause. A dedicated
few carried on, finally winning an end to slavery through economic
incentive by federal and private grants liberating slaves, which planters used
to invest in new farming methods and later factories. Through the Southern
Industrial Revolution, the South's tradition as nation's strongest
economic region surged.

--

In reality, John Brown let the train go on, expecting
word of mouth to be all that was required to start his slave rebellion.
Instead, word went straight to the authorities, and little, if anything, was
mentioned to the slaves. Militia (many of them railroad workers who had been
warned by the train) besieged the arsenal. Lee led the Marines in an
assault that killed many of Brown's men and captured him. Upon his execution as
a traitor to the United States, he became a martyr to the cause of abolition,
written about with glorifying words by men like Thoreau and Alexandre Dumas.